Thursday, November 1, 2012

November is an obvious month for focusing on gratitude, especially in the U.S. because of Thanksgiving. However, I am planning to use this month to not only help my preschooler learn about gratitude and the importance of being thankful, but also as a way to initiate a daily practice of gratitude for the whole family -- one that will carry past the month of November. To get us into the habit, I have a special daily activity planned for us beginning November 1st (today) and running through Thanksgiving.

Each morning, Wild Thing and I will pick one person that he is grateful for (I may need to set out a toy, blanket, book or photo as a prompt), we will then decorate a postcard to send to that person to show our gratitude. At the post office, I got pre-stamped postcards (25 of them) for 35 cents each. A postcard stamp itself is 32 cents, so it seemed easier and more cost-effective to get the blank postcards from the post office -- plus they are perfect to decorate. I decided to do the activity in the morning instead of at night because I like the idea of starting the day with this attitude in mind -- beginning my day with a focus on being grateful.

In our box: post cards, stickers, markers, crayons, letter stamps for his name and a stamp pad.

I love seeing
how many people are initiating this type of focus/activity in November.

What
are you grateful for today? How do you encourage an attitude of
gratitude in your family? Do you have a daily practice? A friend of mine
shared that she has a date journal and every night she writes down one
thing from the day that she is grateful for before going to bed.

28 comments:

This is such a terrific idea, I'm off this afternoon to go buy some prestamped postcards. And for those who know me well I'm not the best at mailing on time so I think this will be a double surprise for them! Can't wait to see what my daughter learns from this. I'd love for you to share on our After School Activities Link up! http://theeducatorsspinonit.blogspot.com/2012/10/waiting-for-new-sibling-to-come-home.html

Love, love, love it! I'm going to go and buy some too. I really think that even my teenagers could use this. Its so easy at their age to be consumed with themselves and their I wants and I needs that they don't stop and take a look at everything they truly have.

Love, love, love it! I'm going to go and buy some too. I really think that even my teenagers could use this. Its so easy at their age to be consumed with themselves and their I wants and I needs that they don't stop and take a look at everything they truly have.

Awesome idea, Jen! It's a great gratitude practice and sure to be appreciated by the lucky recipients, too! Thanks so much for sharing my post. I featured your photo and post in my November Family Gratitude Activities at http://raisingfigureskaters.com/2012/10/31/november-family-gratitude-activities/

What a wonderful idea!! We are doing a Thankful Tree where we add a leaf with what my daughter is thankful each day. She loves doing it, but I love this idea! Thank you so much for sharing at Sharing Saturday!!

This is such a great idea!! I featured you on my site today! I included a picture, but if you don't want it included, let me know and I can remove it. We need help with being more grateful at our house so we are going to try this!

Neat idea! We don't have a daily routine, but when we do cool or fun stuff, we write it down on a piece of paper and put it in the jar. We're gonna get it out on NY and read and remember all the amazing things we did all year!

Good for you! I have a list of gratitude books on http://mythankfuljournal.blogspot.com/2013/04/modeling-gratitude.html that are appropriate for teaching thankfulness to children. Just thot you might like to know!